


we surrender to the power

by flannypack



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 17 year old bowers gang, Aged-Up Character(s), Blood and Injury, Child Abuse, Dubious Consent, Homophobic Language, Implied/Referenced Masturbation, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Sexism, where the events of the book and movie overlap and happen later in the kids' lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-06-26 19:36:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19774990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flannypack/pseuds/flannypack
Summary: Never once in his life had Henry thought it’d be better not to speak, because there wasn’t ever anything Henry wanted to say that shouldn’t be said. Everything came out with a purpose, and Henry didn’t have any targets. He sprayed bullets indiscriminately, just with the intent to kill.But for once, he thought, he’d better be careful.





	1. Chapter 1

Never once in his life had Henry thought it’d be better not to speak, because there wasn’t ever anything Henry wanted to say that shouldn’t be said. Everything came out with a purpose, and Henry didn’t have any targets. He sprayed bullets indiscriminately, just with the intent to kill. 

But for once, he thought, he’d better be careful. 

He didn’t want to put any reason behind it. If he screwed his eyes shut hard enough and rubbed his hands over his sun-marred cheeks to rawness, he’d forget he was ever supposed to know why he figured he should be quiet. He focused on the feeling of the wood frames under his ass, holding together some shitty old corduroy couch he sat on. 

“Well.” Patrick’s voice came from above Henry. He was too good to sit. Henry would’ve said that. He kept his jaws shut tight. 

Patrick was catching his breath.

“I didn’t mean to make it a chase, but you can’t just run like that.” 

Henry could always run. He’d send the dirt flying from under his heels when he took off if it meant he could get away fast enough. Something about the grime always clinging to the frayed ends of Patrick’s clothes smelled more like a headache when he made Henry feel like he could run. Something deep in Henry’s gut twisted in visceral rejection at the thought of punching any more of that filthy stink out. Like he was gonna throw up. 

“You’re makin’ me think you wanted me to follow you in here, Hen. What’s up?” 

Henry thought he might grind his teeth down, like a stupid gerbil to keep its front teeth from growing into its lip. His hands were tired from the rubbing, but if he stopped he might start thinking too much, which would be bad news for a fool who wouldn’t say a single word of it. 

Patrick took a step towards him, Henry flinching in his spot. Fucking fool who won’t say anything, ‘cus there wasn’t a single thing he could garble out of his maw to make Patrick go away. It was too late for that now. He could still feel Patrick’s mouth on his, and couldn’t shake the metallic smell of what Patrick wouldn’t clean from under his fingernails out of his nose. 

Henry made a grab for the edge of the couch cushion when he felt a surge of red tear straight through the middle of his soul. His body wasn’t built for this kind of feeling. 

Henry had let the anger and fear rip right through his putty flesh, which made him tighten his muscles in defense. He was hardening so fast on the inside, his eyeballs could’ve popped right out of his head. Patrick took another step. 

A half-hour ago, Henry made off like a fat buck with his white tail flagged, seconds after Patrick kissed him, just when he was feeling like nothing could top the humiliation of letting the kiss happen in the first place. He wouldn’t admit to himself again that he uttered Patrick’s name before they mashed faces like a couple of itchy sweethearts. 

He had called— _whimpered_ —“Patrick”, like some kind of _pussy-boy_ , when Vic and Belch were out of earshot. 

They shouldn’t have left him alone. They wouldn’t have let this happen. When Henry made a mistake, which was rare, Belch or Victor always knew exactly how to reorient the situation and make it make sense again. 

He was gonna get sick from the pervasive memory, a week ago, of Patrick’s reaching hand, _let me show you something_ , strobing relentlessly behind the skin of his eyelids. That day, that day. The sun had been eating away at the skin on the backs of his shoulders that poked out from the wife-beater wrinkling over his hunched stomach. He breathed in shallow gasps at the override in his brain that told him to stay right there in that spot and sit still, and let Hockstetter give him a helping of goosebumps and cold sweat. And a hand on the front of his pants. 

The same half-hour ago, Patrick ran after him, because of course he fucking would. 

Knowing Butch was on-duty and out of the house, Henry fled to the garage, only hearing how Patrick slowed down when the gravel underneath his boots gave way to concrete. 

“Don’t hurt yourself, Henry!”

He was too late. Henry plastered himself to the back of the couch, and there he ripped more pieces of himself apart right in front of him. Right in front of Patrick. And Patrick was watching him, with that glassy look in his eyes, the same look Henry would make when he stared in the mirror some days and tugged himself off. A brimming, blissed-out look that knew what was coming. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just want to give credit to ao3 author hikasho for the fungus analogy for patrick! i was trying to figure out how to write that bit, and realized the best analogy i could think of was fungus. but i HAVE read hikasho's Patrick/Henry work and did feel like i needed to cite them as my subconscious inspiration! please go check their stuff out!

Victor thought about the exact moment he made peace with Henry’s decision to let Patrick Hockstetter bury his roots for good in the packed dirt of the Bowers Gang. He supposed he got on okay with Patrick, but he didn’t need to hate the guy to have a problem with him. Patrick was a host to disparate types of trouble that Victor found aggressing strange and guiltless things in the fashion of a butterfly-effect. Types of trouble different from Belch’s. And different from Henry’s. 

Victor never said to Patrick’s _face_ that he would fill a room with an overwhelming stench of iron and dirty hair, but nobody argued it wasn’t there. And Victor thought about how the smell wouldn’t be disappearing anytime soon. 

He leaned back to look past Belch at the Hockstetters’ residence, and let the good burn of his cigarette light back up his insides. Belch was making glances in the same direction, forearm perched on the top of the Trans Am’s steering wheel. The sun warmed up their skin and bones for a long afternoon ahead. 

“You looked at any schools yet?” 

Victor puffed some smoke, prickly pins stirring in his stomach when he started sorting, in his head, through all the far-away places his choices for college could take him. 

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “I’m looking at a few. My parents want me to stay close to home because it’s cheaper for ‘em, but…” 

But there wasn’t, and would never be, _shit_ for Victor Criss in this god-forsaken town. 

When he was a kid he didn’t think about how the grown-ups in Derry were anchored to the place for no explicable reason. Now, if he looked at them really close, it was like their souls were _trapped_ within the city lines. Their bodies were as empty as their heads, and they were only present enough to cast on their kids the same spell they were under. 

Older than a child, not yet an adult, Victor decided there was no reason to spend the rest of his life in a town like that. 

“I mean, America’s huge, Belch. I just wanna go places. See what else is out there. I don’t know how much more that’s gonna cost me, but I have a job, I’m saving up.” 

Victor watched Belch fall quiet, looking at the way he swallowed too roughly when he started to think hard about something. His index finger kinda tapped the steering wheel before he spoke. 

“Well, um… If you move away, you’ll… You’ll write me— _us_. As often as you can.” 

Victor couldn’t discern between the heat of the twelve o’ clock sun and the heat of blood rushing up his neck. He smiled, and reached over to pat the top of his friend’s arm in a mutually soothing way, feeling like they both needed some skin-to-skin to redly hush the fluttery mood that edged on butterflies-in-the-stomach. 

They were both pulled out of their momentary reverie when they heard Hockstetter’s screen door slam. 

The hand on Belch’s arm slid back into Victor’s lap while his eyes trained on Patrick, who stalked across his lawn swinging a fat grocery bag by his side. 

“God damn,” Belch breathed. He straightened up in his seat to get a better look at Patrick’s load. 

Patrick’s grin carved into his face from ear to ear, satisfied, as he leaned into the driver’s side to sit the bag onto the floor of the car. Victor craned his head around to take a look at the bag too, as Patrick stepped his long legs into the open top of the Trans Am and fit himself into the back seats. 

“Think he’ll notice six bottles of his Goebel’s missing?” 

“Who the fuck’re we splitting the last two between?” Victor cut in. 

Asking out-loud about Patrick’s decision to get an uneven number of drinks made Victor feel a little better about the answer he already knew. 

Afternoons like these usually wrapped up for Victor around the time Henry started approaching a babbling kind of tipsiness, when words wouldn’t stop coming out the second he felt them in his mouth, and were notably more vulnerable than a sober Henry would ever allow. Victor would start to sense the uncomfortable imbalance of the situation, felt by a person who, if he could swear by only one thing, would never want to impose on his friend’s private business. Especially not Henry’s. 

A feeling he only started having after he met Patrick.

Victor couldn’t tell if Patrick believed he had all three of them fooled. He would watch him over the rim of his bottle, in the later hours of their afternoon drinking, sliding a new drink into Henry’s hands as soon as the last one was empty. Nevertheless, _Henry’s_ brain would be working overtime if it was gonna notice who was funneling him a diligent, direct supply of 14% alcohol the whole night, and think to ask why. Or, maybe, way, way far back, near the deepest parts of his mind, Henry understood what was happening. Because Henry was also the only one who knew what happened after Belch and Victor had their fill and packed up for the night. Patrick would hang back with Henry, wearing a thin veil of stillness that made Victor’s skin itch. 

There were a few moments where Victor’s question hung in the air between the three of them. Belch was staring forward in silence, and might’ve well just went ahead and started up the car. Nothing Patrick was going to answer would change the plans for that afternoon. Victor watched Patrick press his elbow into a corner of the rear window and the interior wall as he leaned back, then smiled at him. 

“Sorry, Vic. They’re for me n’ Hen. Don’t you know that?” 

Victor turned back around and snubbed his cigarette on his tongue. 

“Fuck’re you waiting for, Belch? Let’s go, we’re wasting daylight.” 

Patrick might’ve taken root in the Bowers Gang, but Victor was starting to think Patrick’s roots were less like a tree's, and more like a fungus’. They were superficial. He could easily pluck himself right out from the fibers of the four of them, but his kind thrived on the dark and decay. And for Patrick Hockstetter, sticking around Henry Bowers provided more than enough.

The engine rumbled to life, and as they whizzed by trees and houses, and kids on their bikes, Victor flicked his cigarette out from the open roof of the Trans Am.

**Author's Note:**

> im new to this fandom but im so in love with some henry/patrick fic writers' interpretation of their relationship dynamic. this misinterpreted power imbalance. hopefully i update this soon!


End file.
